


Time-crossed Lovers

by Sleepless_in_Starbucks



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, And by references I mean they're literally acting out the play, Bad vine and meme references, But butchered horriby, Nonbinary Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, Other, Romeo and Juliet References, Shakespearean Language, Teen only because techincally there's swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 06:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18463673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sleepless_in_Starbucks/pseuds/Sleepless_in_Starbucks
Summary: Today was the day William Shakespeare was going to die. And it was all because of the actor with amethysts in their hair.





	Time-crossed Lovers

Today was the day William Shakespeare was going to die.

    William Shakespeare was quite sure of it. He had written enough death scenes to understand the general way it went; you lose everything important to you, watch your world crumble into pieces, and then pass away painfully, often to build drama.

    The only problem here was no drama was going to get built. In fact, Shakespeare was quite sure no drama would ever be built again upon his stage. Not after the actor with hair the colour of amethysts was done, anyways.

~~

    The day had started normal as always. Today the Globe was putting on Romeo and Juliet, and the people, as always, flocked to the stands. They did love a good tragedy.

    As he was wandering backstage, however, the first problem presented itself. Romeo’s actor was nowhere to be found. Further inquiries around the man revealed that he had gotten into a drunken brawl the other night, and was either dead or lying in some pile of manure.

    Shakespeare couldn’t believe it. Not only was his actor unavailable, his backup (Shakespeare himself) had developed an aching throat, one that allowed him to speak but not loudly, and was unable to take over.

    And there were a few hundred people outside, waiting for a performance.

    Great.

    Before Shakespeare could start checking with all the backup actors to see if any of them could make their way through Romeo’s part, a newcomer stumbled into him.

    “Oh, shxt, I’m so sorry!” They practically yelled as they regained their balance and helped Shakespeare with his as well. Before he could say anything on their vulgar language, his attention was caught by how odd they looked.

    His eyes were first drawn to their hair. What he first took as some headdress covered in jewels he quickly realized was simply _their hair._ By some means, they had made it glimmer in the light as though it were made of the amethysts hidden deep within the earth.

    As unusual as that was, it went hand in hand with their pants of a thick, blandly coloured material and their raggy purple top, despite the stranger looking nothing of the royalty who wore that colour. Their shoes were bright purple- though a different shade from their hair- with red ropes laced over them.

    “Who are thee?” Shakespeare asked, still stuck on their shoes. He looked up when they started speaking.

    “Oh, uh, I am Virgil.” They- Virgil- frowned. “Wait, is Virgil a common name here?” They asked, though it seemed they were talking more to themself than Shakespeare.

    “Virgil, are thee hapily an actor?”

    Virgil itched the back of their neck. “Uh, yes? In a way? Not sure I’m super good at it, though.”

    “Are thee well acquainted with the tale of Romeo and Juliet? Most the part of Romeo?”

    “Well, I did a course in high school on it.”

    Shakespeare wasn’t sure what high school was but he pressed on anyways, encouraged by Virgil’s recognition of the play. “Are thee male?”

    “No. But I’m not a girl, either!” They rushed to assure him. “I’m, well, that’s complicated, see, I just go by ‘they’ and ‘them’ and not gendered pronouns, so, eh,”

    Shakespeare didn’t understand half of what Virgil was saying. What he did catch, however, was that Virgil was not a girl, and that was good enough for him. “Aye, aye,” He grabbed their arm and pulled them towards Romeo’s room, “if thee is truly an actor, then thee shalt be wanting for a part of equal grandeur to yourself. Come, come, make haste; the curtains rise quickly now!”

    “What the fxck what the fxck what the fxxxxxck.” Virgil was muttering as Shakespeare pulled Romeo’s outfit off the stool it had been draped on. Ignoring them, he pushed the cloth into their hands.

    “Hie! The curtain rises anon!” Shakespeare yelled as Virgil untangled the costume.

    “You, uh, want me to put this on?”

    Shakespeare frowned, not completely sure what they were saying, and repeated, “Hie!” Before leaving to check that the chorus was prepared. By the time he had returned, Virgil was struggling on the second sleeve, their own ridiculous outfit stacked on top of the stool.

    “Listen, I didn’t exactly catch what all this is for-” Virgil was in the middle of saying, their words still a mix of well-known yet foreign words to Shakespeare’s ears as he tugged them back behind the stage. He crammed a script into their hands.

    “‘Tis mine hope that thy memory serves thee well this day, but when thou hath a moment thou should not squander it.” He instructed quickly, glancing back to where Benvolio had just entered scene. “Thy hour approaches. Hie, hie!”

    Virgil just barely had a moment to flip the script open and catch the first few lines before Shakespeare shoved them onto the stage, making sure to pull the script back as well. Moving to the side, he prepared himself to watch.

    He had not expected to begin his viewing of the worst version of Romeo and Juliet to ever plague his stage.

    Stumbling, Virgil did not look the part of a downhearted, heartsick Romeo. And while they managed to choke out, “Is the day so young?”, none of their other lines were right. In fact, Shakespeare wasn’t even quite sure what they were.

    As Benvolio continued to talk of love, Virgil went wildly off tangent. Much to his praise, Benvolio held character and continued his lines as Virgil blurted out, “Cupid sucks” instead of Romeo’s fourteen lined wrath at Cupid, and, “It’s not Juan” instead of, “This is not Romeo.”

    By the time the party scene was near its closing, Shakespeare was ready to defy his affliction and take the stage. Scene after scene had been butchered, the first two kisses between Romeo and Juliet being so far the worse- Virgil had made not one illusion to pilgrims nor saints, instead seemingly finding immense joys in giving lines such as:

    “Dare I look upon thine tiddies, with barbeque sauce upon them?”

    “And palm to palm is holy kiss, but cheek to cheek is dance so thrilling it doth not equal climbing any mountain peak.”

    “Sin from thy lips? Yeet it back to me.”

    Shakespeare was just about at his wit’s end. So when the three men in dark, who everyone knew were debtors, wandered into his line of vision, Shakespeare was quite sure today was the day of his dying.

    The men of debt and poor mistakes made haste in grabbing Mercutio’s actor by his arms and dragging him half-screaming out one of the hallways. Shakespeare sighed, a sigh he thought must have been deeper than the oceans and heavier than the riches of her Majesty. Now, he needed a new Mercutio, a role so small and an actor so dependable they had never assigned him a secondary player.

    Then, as though the Fates had answered his troubles with another demon, a disheveled stranger dressed in the same strange manner as Virgil- same pants, similar shoes with inverted colours, and a red shirt with a portrait Shakespeare could have sworn was his own bearing darkened glasses- rushed in through the same hall Mercutio had just forcefully exited.

    “Hey, uh, you! Have you see a Virgil around here?” They asked, coming up directly to Shakespeare, the only person not in the act of bustling around. “They’re wearing, well, really torn up clothing, and-”

    Shakespeare pushed himself up, shaking his head. “Aye, aye, Virgil is at moment occupied with the ruination of mine efforts!” He shouted. The stranger blinked.

    “So… that’s a yes?”

    Shakespeare restrained himself from slapping the stranger. “Hath thine decent knowledge of the character Mercutio from mine play Romeo and Juliet?”

    “Oh, Mercutio? He’s a cool character. Don’t know his Queen Mab speech too well, though.”

    “‘Tis well enough that scene is played.” Shakespeare responded, reacting to ‘Queen Mab,’ the only part he really understood of the sentence. He took his general impression that this stranger knew Mercutio, however, and for the second time that day began to drag a stranger to the back rooms.

    “Pray not say thine is a woman.” He said as he shoved the stranger into the room, this one holding all the spare costumes.

    “No, I’m a man. Name’s Roman.” Roman extended his hand to shake, but Shakespeare was too busy pulling off Mercutio’s spare costume off the rack.

    “Hie to put this on, the play hath been delayed already too badly.” Shakespeare urged, stepping out to see that the chorus was preparing to give his opening speech. _Only one act in and already I fear the crowd shall anon fling their ripe and rotten fruits at us._

    Behind him, Roman stumbled out of the room, straightening his hat. “Do you just like having people in costumes, or…?”

    Shakespeare pulled him to just behind the curtains, beside Benvolio. “Thine scene begins.”

    Moving back to his watching place, Shakespeare was eternally relieved to find that Roman actually knew his part. Though he missed a few words, and at one moment skipped an entire line, he stayed to the script and made it work.

    As he exited stage, however, and Virgil once more held the unlucky crowd’s attention, Shakespeare sagged against the nearest wall, already disappointed in what was to come. And with such winning lines as:

    “Juliet, so pretty, willingly I’d let thee stab me.”

    “O, speak again! For while I, Jared of but nineteen years, cannot read, I can listen.”

    “If the risk of seeing you is the risk of sweet death, than what risk is there really?”

    “Love does not simply go towards love.”

    Shakespeare just knew the Fates were taunting him.

    “Oh, aren’t they doing great?” Shakespeare glanced over. Roman had come to join him in his watching. Unlike Shakespeare, however, he had found a way to enjoy the monstrosity occurring upon his stage, if his smile told anything.

    Shakespeare simply sighed again and slumped to the floor, refusing to watch anymore. The one line that he dared to hear seemed to come from the right-before-the-wedding scene. That didn’t make the line any less un-understandable:

    “Juliet, before we wed, there is something thee must know: I’m an a-dult vir-gin.”

    The second he took to glance up, he found that now even Roman was failing to do the simplest of scenes. Instead of dying, he was standing up, clutching his chest, and wandering backstage, yelling out to the audience, “‘Tis but a flesh wound, good Benvolio and Romeo. I shalt but walk it off.”

    Uncertain laughter came from the crowd as Virgil pulled out their sword and demanded of Tybalt, “Pay me back, in time, what you own! For I hath but sixty-nine cents, and cannot afford even a chicken nugget!”

    That line alone, of words Shakespeare, master of words, could not understand, was enough to convince him the final nail had really, truly, been slammed into his coffin. He was quite sure that this play alone would destroy his entire career. He slumped to the ground again, wondering if by ignoring them they might disappear as quickly and violently they had come to screw up his world.

    He wasn’t sure exactly how much time had passed when there was yet another scuffle backstage. Shakespeare glanced up, towards where Roman was steering Balthasar’s character away from the curtains and entering himself.

    “What…?” Shakespeare forced himself back up once more and watched the scene that played, set with Virgil doing some odd dance that consisted of them throwing their arm forward and then back and over again. Roman ran on stage, and a buzz instantly rose from the crowd, wondering why Mercutio was back.

    Virgil stopped dancing to turn and face him. “Oh, Ro- uh, Mercutio! How are you?”

    “Good.”

    “Hmm. How’s, eh, Juliet?”

    “Well, I mean, she could be better.”

    “That sounds bad.”

    “She’s slightly dead.”

    “Only slightly?”

    “Well, maybe a bit more than just slightly.”

    “Oh, drat, oh no, oh foul fates; what am I to do about the death of that girl I think I loved?”

    Shakespeare felt as though his heart might leap out of his chest. Though Virgil’s words, as always, were odd to him, he was no fool. He got the general impression they had basically just said they didn’t care about Juliet. Romeo not caring with all his soul for the death of Juliet was like Caesar not saying, “Et tu, Brute?” or Ophelia not accidentally drowning herself in a mad fervor. The play was nothing without it.

    Roman, on the other hand, seemed completely and utterly unworried as he continued on, “Do you, like, want to pay her homage or something?”

    “I guess I probably should. How should I get there?”

    “Ride me.”

    Virgil and Roman instantly blurted out a laugh at that, though Shakespeare couldn’t fathom why. After a moment, Roman continued,

    “I mean, ride me horse.” He gestured offstage. “I have big horse. It hath strength to bring us both to Juliet's tomb.”

    “Uh, yeah, sure. Shall we…?”

    Before Virgil and Roman could exit stage, however, a hurried apothecary rushed on with just enough time to blurt out, “Death to thee who utters them!” and shove the vial of poison into Virgil’s hands.

    Virgil shrugged. “Death. Cool.” And wandered off stage with Roman.

    While the friars went out to do their bit, Shakespeare hurried over to where Roman and Virgil had fallen into conversation.

    “...well it’s definitely more fun than double death duty.” Virgil was in the middle of saying when Shakespeare reached them.

    “Alack, alack! What horrid day hath thine brought upon me? My stage a sin, my play disgraced; hath thou more dishonors to bring forth?!” He demanded of them.

    For a minute, they didn’t respond. Virgil tilted their head in confusion while Roman tugged at a small red jewel embedded in his earlobe. Shakespeare continued,

    “Were it not my players forfeit to fortune, I myself wouldst cast thee from the stage! Anon, too anon, thou shalt once more take the stage, and with thine final words, cast mine name to the bloodthirsty vultures!”

    Roman patted Shakespeare shoulder. “Don’t worry, dude, we got this in the bag.”

    Shakespeare blinked, unsure what he said, decided it was not good for him, and went back to his lone watching post. Roman turned to shrug at Virgil before they were called back on stage.

    Shakespeare watched Virgil stumble their way through the epic fight scene between Paris, with Roman casually observing as Virgil threw their swords at Paris instead of fighting. Paris, to his credit, grasped the area the first sword hit and did a well enough faint, even if Virgil poked his side and moved on instead of carrying his body inside the tomb.

    Paris taken care of, Virgil and Roman headed inside the tomb, walking over to Juliet's prone figure.

    “She looks so… not dead.” Roman marveled.

    “Surely that cannot be natural?” Virgil asked.

    “It cannot. And I’m going to be honest, it’s freaking me out a little bit.”

    Virgil pulled the vial of poison out of the hidden pocket within their coat. “Perhaps this… whatever it is will decrease the shimmer from her lips?”

    “Worth a shot.”

    And then Shakespeare got to watch Romeo pour poison down his Juliet's throat, thus guaranteeing her death and destroying the final strains of romantic drama in the play. A low grumble began among the crowd, many already knowing how this play should end and what Romeo had just done.

    “So… now what?” Virgil asked, discarding the vial with a lazy throw to the side.

    “I suppose we must get you back to, uh, Mantua. I’d hate to see the prince behead thee.”

    “And you? What shall you do?”

    “See you off, I suppose, and come back to Verona. My absence wouldst be noted.”

    “Oh, must thou go?” Virgil took Roman’s hand. “Mercutio, I hath loved and lost to much. Come away with me.”

    “I hath duties to be attended.”

    “Hath you no duty to thine heart?” Virgil moved their other hand to Roman’s face to caress their cheek. “Mercutio, Mercutio, thou art more lovely than two free tacos.”

    “Oh, Romeo, thou art too sweet.” Roman answered, moving his hand to Virgil’s face as well, forming perfect symmetry as they both leaned in for a kiss.

     Despite the awful acting that had thus far preceded it, Shakespeare was startled by how tender and rich and real their kiss was. They seemed to melt into each other, pulling closer, and Shakespeare realized that no man nor woman nor any other could kiss so sweetly, so passionately were they not already sweet and passionate together.

     Finally after a moment too long and yet too short, the two lovers pulled back and, arm looped in arm, promptly left the stage. They wandered directly into their rooms, leaving Shakespeare to watch as a confused chorus wandered out, stood before the angry crowd, and say naught more than, “Never was there a tale of more woe, than that of… Mercutio and his Romeo?”

     Within a second, tomatoes appeared in the crowd’s hands and were flung directly at the poor chorus, who was forced to rush off the stage. The backstage was thrown in chaos as actors rushed to leave before the crowd, already climbing onto the stage, could reach them.

     Shakespeare himself joined the hoard, knowing that if he was found to have been watching the entire act, he himself would lose any hope of ever even slightly being favored ever again by the people. As he hurried off, however, he was forced to stop a moment as a slightly bewildered Virgil and Roman exited their rooms, changed back into their unusual yet oddly striking clothes.

     “Are thee truly lovers?” He asked them. Though they did not reply, their expressions and the trusting way Virgil leaned their head upon Roman’s shoulder told all. He nodded once.

     “Thou are despicable actors, but shouldst thee ever learn a half wit of line, thee are the romance of Romeo and Juliet.” He told them before grabbing Virgil’s arm once again. “Make haste, now, or thee wilt surely be trampled.”

     Even as he looked away to navigate their way threw the crowd, Shakespeare knew the two lovers tightened their hold upon each other as to guarantee they would not be separated. He smiled.

~~

    “Well he was nice.”

    Roman laughed. “He was, though I wish I actually knew old-timey English. I could barely understand him!”

    Virgil laughed as well. “Me neither. But I get the feeling he did not appreciate our changes to the script.”

    “Definitely not. I do think he approved of us, however.”

    “Oh, who wouldn't?” Virgil teased, pulling Roman closer to them once more. “We’re adorable.”

    “You got that right.” Roman said, kissing Virgil. “Though,” he began, pulling away for a moment, “quite awful at being time travelers.”

    “Do shut up.” Virgil said and pulled him back into the kiss.

    “Happily.” He whispered against their lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Look! You actually made it to the end! This is my first fic, so any comments or constructive criticism is welcomed!
> 
>  
> 
> If you liked it and seem to like me for some reason, my tumblr: https://sleepless-in-starbucks.tumblr.com/


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